The Smiley Smile Message Board

Hey,

I'm a newbie so sorry if this is an old subject.

BUT... I remember reading somewhere how Van Dyke Parks was miffed at Lennon and MCCartney dropping in on a Smile recording session when none of the Beach Boys were present. I can't remember where I read his quote he said something along the lines of the pair being unworthy of dropping by and stealing ideas. I know Macca came by to hear the sessions on April 10, 1967, but is there anything to support Van Dyke Parks' assertion that he and Lennon came by before?

Thanks!

Did Lennon ever even visit the US in 1967?

This might be a better fit for the main forum..

We went through this not long after the claim emerged in 2005 or thereabouts: a cursory once-over of the various timelines revealed that no-one was in the right place at the right time for the event as reported to have possibly happened.

There was also the claim that certain Beatles members got people at a tape  storage facility to play unfinished "Smile" session tapes for them in early 1967, and that this made Brian paranoid  enough to move future recording  activity to his home  studio. Brian never publicly accused The Beatles, nor has any Beatle ever commented. 

Same story: briefly, it was claimed that staff at Armin Steiner's Sound Recorders played an 8-track Smile tape for unspecified members of The Beatles. Complete nonsense, of course. FWIW, VDP later changed his mind and said that he based his comment on the fact that both album contained "sound effects".

As for neither side commenting on the incident, well, given that it never happened, that's hardly surprising.  ;D

Was the tape they played labeled "Dumb Angel?"

 :thumbsup

Two rather threadbare connections to consider, again not suggesting anything specific but worth considering.

1. Derek Taylor - I understand this issue has been discussed but Derek was the direct link between both camps at that time. It was revealed in another thread that perhaps Brian Wilson was more liberal with letting copies of his music into his friends' and associates' hands during Smile, if you believe some of what Jules Seigel has said about getting acetate copies from Brian. Consider Derek Taylor was a very smart and savvy man. The Beatles, specifically Paul, were listening to "Pet Sounds" *heavily* in late 66 - early 67, the report even confirmed by engineer Geoff Emerick who said Paul had the album playing on a turntable at Abbey Road constantly as Pepper was being recorded. Derek Taylor knew what Brian was doing with Smile, would the slight possibility exist that he may have offered a sneak peak of Brian's work to the Beatles at some point?

2. Audio evidence - I can't post it here, and it's a touchy one anyway, but there is an outtake of a Paul McCartney overdub session for Penny Lane that sounds remarkably like some of the Smile outtakes and sonic experiments, including very specific use of echo with a piano, echo/delay feeding back on itself, and just an overall vibe that reminded me of some Smile audio. Coincidence? Perhaps, but it's pretty compelling whatever the circumstances that led to Paul playing around with those kinds of sounds in January 1967.

I'll say there are no actual released Beatles songs that you could point to as a Smile theft. I'll also say Penny Lane, in many musical ways, is as close as Paul got to "Pet Sounds" with the Beatles, and it's pretty neat to pick out the influences in that track, from the multiple pianos, to the walking bassline, to the falsetto vocal behind the horn solo, to the shuffle/swing drum rhythm, and many others.

As an observation, has anyone noticed the similarities between the song She's On My Mind from (David Marks' band) The Moon's album Without Earth and Penny Lane ? Very Pepper/Penny Lane-influenced, down to the shuffle rhythm and piccolo trumpet solo, Marks has stated that Sgt Pepper was constantly playing when The Moon made that album.

Maybe The Moon stole the Pepper tapes?

The Beatles were excellent musicians, songwriters, and human beings.  They didn't need to steal SMiLE, they were capable of creating something just as good, or even in fact better on their own.   

A Beatles fan! GET HIM!!!  :angry

Right on, Ron

Except they never created anything better than Smile; tho they tried, using the purloined acetates...  ;D

My Beach Boys story goes like this.....
As a kid massive Beatles fan. Bought all the Albums in a box set listened to them endlessly. Then bought the tapes and then the CD's. Anthology came out bought it on VHS. One day  I happened to see an interview with Sean Lennon and what he said changed my life...Brian Wilson is John,Paul,George, Ringo and Sir George Martin all rolled into one!!

And the Beatles did not steal Smile they just borrowed it for a while...

Christ, it's getting like the Hoffman board...

(http://www.411mania.com/siteimages/saw6jigsaw_34028.jpg)

The SMiLE tapes borrowed/stolen/lent to the Beatles were lost in the wreckage of the car crash in London that killed Paul McCartney on November 9, 1966*. McCartney had left a recording session following a bad-blood argument over whether the Beatles should copy ideas he had played to them from the SMiLE tapes. Distracted by infuriation, he failed to negotiate a bend and totalled his car.

The tapes are believed to have been retrieved from the wreckage of his car by a road traffic investigation officer and never returned. It is thought that, to this day, they're locked in an evidence storeroom in a police station in the City of Westminster**.




* Not, for some reason, mentioned on AGD's site.
** For Alan and Mark's benefit, this lead ain't worth following up.
*** ;D

Frankly I think they were a hell of a lot more worried how to top Pet Sounds then Smile. Remember Smile took time before it really achieved cult status, but Pet Sounds was a must have in the UK upon release.

In many respects SMiLE and Sgt Pepper are total opposites, at least for me they are. SMiLE at its heart is a uniquely American experience, while Sgt Pepper is a uniquely British experience.
To put it another way, Brian and Van Dyke could never have written a song like "A Day In The Life", while John and Paul could never have written a sing like "Surf's Up". They're both wonderful songs though.

Spot on. SMiLE is rather esoteric and impenetrable in places; Pepper is utter British and many songs paints a straightforward story, albeit often with a subtext. She's Leaving Home (for eg) is a tremendous piece of story telling that achieves most of its narrative by implication. "Meeting a man from the motor trade" implies so much more than a mere love affair, for eg. Bit like they did with Eleanor Rigby on Revolver. The nearest the Beach Boys – well, Brian and Van Dyke – come to that is Wonderful, but they do it in a completely different way, and leave many more dangling threads. The beauty's there, but culturally they're worlds apart.

And in Surf's Up and Day In The Life, you've picked what are to me the pinnacles of each band's creative output. Contradictorily though, both bands relaxed somewhat after those songs, and their output became more enjoyable for being so much looser. Does that sound odd? Well, I'd appreciate an Ego Ronay-rated posh meal, but I'd get more satisfaction from a bacon roll and a mug of instant coffee.

This whole argument is so ignorant, it's like asking if Donald Trump stole the tip jar.  When you're capable of writing "A Day In the Life" or "She's Leaving Home" like mentioned above, you're operating at the absolute highest level as a songwriter, clearly every bit as talented as Brian himself was. 

You don't have to stack everything in a list and give it a number, it's quite alright to like Brian, AND John... AND Paul.  John, Paul, and Brian all liked each other, btw.  It's also alright to enjoy Tears for Fears or whatever pet sounds you have yourself. 

You know what I did?   Sneaky me.  I bought the Beatles, AND the Beach Boys albums.  Shhhhh, dont' tell anybody.  You can do that too, you know.  Tee Heee Heee.  I got a whole f&ckin room full of music, by all kinds of people.  Gasp!  I don't even have them in order!!!! Sometimes, I listen to the radio, and they play different songs!  It's CRAZY!  They don't even do a countdown to tell me which one is the best song!  I'M LIVIN ON THE EDGE!!!!

WHoa dude!  Sounds like you're almost to the schozophrenic line with all those different sounds coming your way! 
Might want to lay low and just listen to Sumahama on repeat for awhile....

I heard Roy Wood say in an interview that in England you were either a Beach Boys fan or a Beatles fan. He was a Beach Boys fan. In my experience it is a little unusual to find someone who's a big fan of both groups.

And Donald might well steal the tip jar, but I doubt he'd confess. 

I like both. I used to think if you loved one it meant you would hate the other.... Took me years to figure out they they were talking about the Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones.

 :p

Which in some ways is kind of ironic, when you consider that Roy was one of the founding members of ELO. A band who's original purpose was to "continue where The Beatles left off with 'I Am The Walrus'".

.....Where does Good Vibrations play into The Beatle's artistic competition? Surely this would've compelled them to step up their game...which of course they failed at in the end... :ninja

Now I'm wishing I was in the UK music scene of the 60's. :(

Not sure, I am English and I knew quite a few people who are fans of both the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

It may be more difficult to be a fan of both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones...

In America the modern day hipsters love the Beatles and look down upon The Beach Boys. I mean, let's face it, the Beatles were the hippest band to ever grace the planet, The Beach Boys, on the other hand, just wrote surf and car tunes. ::)

This all too common perception of the Beach Boys is really sad. Makes me want to rent a GoodYear Blimp and travel cross country for 5 years blasting Smiley Smile and Friends from it.

Maybe that depends on where you live. I don't see hipsters as particularly obsessed with Beatles over Beach Boys. More like it's an accepted fact that everyone has that Beatles undercurrent, they so permeated everyone's upbringing. But then there are plenty of hipster circles who absolutely worship Beach Boys. First (in my experience, not talking on a broader scale) there were those discovering Smile; then there was a sort of surf/early stuff pushback, almost an "F you, this is just as good"; and eventually just the kind of overall (well, except for Mike...) acceptance of their importance. I think hipsters tend not to bother with the intensity of Beatles worship and promotion because it's just so unnecessary; by definition, hipsters are tending to try to dig up something a little less omnipresent and push it as some kind of underground/unknown thing. I'd say in the past 15 years at least, in fits and spurts, that has been Beach Boys more than Beatles.

I think that Pet Sounds has been well excepted as a hip LP by the Beach Boys. But I agree that the overwhelming image is of the surf and car era. A celebration of a more innocent time.

I knew I should have put parentheses around the word "hipster" - I meant people who think of themselves as hipsters - the collegiate d-bags that are hipsters for the image and nothing else.

I know some 'hipsters' that don't think of themselves as hipsters - they just glide through life enjoying anything that comes their way (I consider these people to be hip). And then there are the "hipsters" that love the Beatles and have a strict set of conformities that make them different from the social norms but are just anti-conformists for the sake of being different. I have only noticed this in my college town...so it may be different elsewhere...but I think it is prevalent in most areas.

Not saying that "true" hipsters can't love the Beatles, but most I've known have been open to both the Beach Boys and the Beatles as well as many other types of music.

Not to totally derail things (maybe this is a sandbox thread...), but I really would only associate the term hipster with people who somewhat consciously decide they are hipsters. To me, the meaning of the term is reserved for those who are totally image-conscious. People who just happen to be really cool, well, they're just cool people.

I've always loved both.   The "who's better" debate never really made a lot of sense to me because they were such different animals, inhabiting very different places under the umbrella of "rock and roll".  
Pepper and Smile would have stood side by side.   The two greatest psychedelic pop albums.  American and British varieties.  
The only similarity to me is that both were attempting to achieve the ultimate studio creation, all the bells and whistles they could manage to throw in they would.  The music, the "concepts", were not the same at all.  One was Beatles, the other Beach Boys.  Each as good as the other as examples of their individual scenes.  
As an American I can't help but see the Beach Boys as the "home town team", so they get an edge on the Beatles for that, but otherwise I'm happy digging both.  
And i llike the Stones a lot too.   ;D

Same here. I know the Beatles music is good, but they have been praised so much over my preferred band (the BB, obviously) and indeed everything else that I actually hate them. Crazy, I know.

This somewhat reminds me of that scene from Seinfeld where someone calls Kramer a "hipster dufous" - Kramer denies that he is one, yet he clearly is one LOL. I have a friend who hates everything mainstream (the definition of being hip) yet he doesn't do it just to piss of the man. He does it because he sees no real benefit from our over-polluted society....and many would regard him as being hip. Then again, I think it was in LLVS or another SMiLE book where Brian was telling someone the definition of being hip was being against anything hip - quite the irony.

There are a variety of hipsters out there.

Regardless, there are people out there who like the Beatles solely because it is hip and they won't give the Beach Boys a second glance (or even an initial one at that) because of the unhip perception of the band. And I find that to be very unhip.

"Rather than an album of psychedelic music (compared to which it actually sounds retro), Sgt. Pepper was the Beatles' answer to the sophistication of Pet Sounds, the masterpiece by their rivals, the Beach Boys, released a year and three months before. The Beatles had always been obsessed by the Beach Boys. They had copied their multi-part harmonies, their melodic style and their carefree attitude. Through their entire career, from 1963 to 1968, the Beatles actually followed the Beach Boys within a year or two, including the formation of Apple Records, which came almost exactly one year after the birth of Brother Records. Pet Sounds had caused an uproar because it delivered the simple melodies of surf music through the artistic sophistication of the studio. So, following the example of Pet Sounds, the Beatles recorded, from February to May 1967, Sgt. Pepper, disregarding two important factors: first that Pet Sounds had been arranged, mixed and produced by Brian Wilson and not by an external producer like George Martin, and second that, as always, they were late. They began assembling Sgt. Pepper a year after Pet Sounds had hit the charts, and after dozens of records had already been influenced by it."

The rest of this article by Piero Scarrufi (http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html) is funny due largely to the seething rage it generates from Beatles fans, 'cause, well, Scarrufi really doesn't like the Beatles!

I am a "hipster". And I grew up on the Beatles and they will forever be my favorite band. But I discovered the Beach Boys 12 years ago thanks to a song called "God Only Knows" and I really do spend more time listening to BB/BW/DW than the Beatles but I will always feel that the Beatles won the war so to speak. They broke up at the perfect time and left us Abbey Road. And I looooooove playing Beatles Rockband on my WII. So there!

The Beatles are my favourite band, followed by The Beach Boys.

Followed by The Kinks if that helps.

I grew up with The Beatles in the backgound. Have to say, they never really did it for me in the way they do for a lot of people: in one sense they are far and away the most over-rated band ever. Now hate me.  ;D

No hate. But I feel like that's an easier thing to say in retrospect than it would have been when they were taking the world by storm (unless one was the type who believed that it could never get any better than jazz or classical).

I love The Beatles music. It doesn't get much better than rubber soul for me.

However, I can go months without listening to a Beatles record and still feel content, whereas I don't go many places without taking a copy of Pet Sounds with me. The Beach Boys are more relatable and coherent in their music. The Beatles used a wide variety of brushes to create culturally jolting music. Brian used a wide variety of brushes and palettes to create sonic beauty that is harshly overlooked by many in mainstream culture.

I am a big fan of the Beatles but only to a point. They were a good group that's all. I hate the hype around them. I also like the Stones especally when Brian Jones was in the group. Maybe I like them even better then the Beatles. Still the Beach Boys are still in my eyes the best. There's just more there for me. That doesn't preclude me liking and collecting dozens of other artists.

I love them both. Really deeply and differently. I heard more Beatles earlier, and more often throughout my formative years. Beach Boys deep fascination was later, but in no way is any kind of negation of the Beatles' brilliance or influence on me. I have the same sort of amazement and disbelief at someone saying he doesn't care about Beatles as about Beach Boys. But then I feel the same when someone says that about Dylan, Queen, Zeppelin, Tom Waits, Prince, Big Star, Thelonious Monk, Michael Jackson, Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian, Miles Davis, Mountain Goats...let's be honest. I am self-centered enough that anything I like, I assume everyone ought to like. To think otherwise baffles me.

Luther & Rab OTM pretty much. I do love The Beatles, but like someone loves their old street or an old girlfriend or something. The Beach Boys are much more fulfilling as a passion, probably because they went sour and there is always the thought of 'what might have been'. The Beatles don't have stories equivalent to SMiLE!, or characters as strong as Mike or Brian.

Plus, every crap band has a Beatles album which they will slavishly imitate. The same can't be said for the BB's  ;D

I used to collect Beatles boots in the hopes of finding something more (same as BB boots, were i to collect those...) and it turns out there is nothing more. The Beatles have always left me cold=no soul. I have absolutely no emotional connection to there hip tunes. They all seem totally dated and hopelessly of their time. BB music on the other hand (with a few exceptions) is timeless and deeply affecting. There are layers of soul, feeling and pathos in almost every BB recording that cannot be found anywhere else. You want catchy pop, go with the Beatles. You want deep soul music, it's the BB all the way.

I almost totally disagree with every part of that. But such is life.

We really need to put a cap on these BB over Beatles threads...it's getting old, but that's just my opinion. ;D

Jeesh, if we start closing threads due to repetitious posts......well, er, that'll be the end of SmileySmile.net as we know it :lol

Besides, there'll probably be some SMiLE announcement next week that will put this thread in the dustbin of Beach Boys fandom for the next few weeks.

Not to mention that Mike Love wore a beard a year before the Beatles did.  ;D

I think though that with all the praise that Pet Sounds rightfully receives, the influence of the Good Vibrations single both musically and sonically is neglected somewhat.

And also a celebration of a location and lifestyle unatainable to most English people....we make do with rain and cups of tea :)

The allusions to sun, sand, surf, big cars and fine girls are a huge part of why the Beach Boys were successful in the UK...not just the fact that most of the surfin/cruisin era songs are bloody good rock and roll  melodies.

Diffeirent people are moved by different things. I can be emotionally moved by the Beach Boys, Beatles, Brahms, King Crimson, Duke Ellington to name a few. I wouldn't expect everybody to be moved by the same sounds. That doesn't stop somebody being a fan of the Beach Boys and the Beatles.